'I haven't sat down to play the games, and I won't': Fallout's Walton Goggins says he 'not interested' in playing the RPGs his show is based on

Counter-counter: Henry Cavill was playing the Witcher, the central character in the lore. Walter Goggins is playing someone not in the original lore.

Pointercount, the lore in Fallout is grossly inconsistent which is not the case for The Witcher.

There’s a difference in knowing the source material and being a fan/playing the games.

Counterpoint: You can know the source material without having played the game.

The most recent season of the Witcher was pretty good though.

Fallout has the most inconsistent lore of almost any IP

And if that happens the odds of it being the fault of a single actor are zero.

That is the furthest thing from what he said. You’re looking for a reason to be upset.

Counterpoint:

Art is interpretive by its nature, and each person has their vision for how it should appear. That said, why would you want to watch something that is a 1:1 of something you’ve already consumed? It’s okay, and often encouraged to stray from the source material.

Even the creator of Fallout acknowledges this.

For example — for better or worse — comics exemplify this idea with the many iterations of their superheroes. e.g. Superman originally couldn’t fly. Some are better than others, but in the end we (the fans) get a more rich and diverse world for our imaginations.

How many of these games have you played? The lore is never consistent so he really has little to gain from the experience. As he's in his 50s he might not have time to game

I don't think he's trying to act noble. I think he's just very aware of his own acting process and how his brain works. It'd be different if he said nobody in the cast should play the games. Or maybe he doesn't think it's a great idea for the star of a video game adaptation to say he doesn't like video games.

Yeah, it actually also makes sense for an actor to avoid seeing other films with that character if they're going to portray an entirelly new version of that character.

In Method Acting character building is a lot about what are the motivations and drives of the "person" which is the character and "living truthfully (the character's life) under imaginary circunstances" and judging by how he talks about it he is indeed using Method Acting.

As for games, they might be an even worse influence than previous films because the emotional depth of in game characters is generally zero or close to it (except in things like cutscenes were they used actors, MOCAP and a very detailed model for expressions), akin to a woden performance.

It's valid for an actor using Method Acting not to want to be exposed to a different representation of the world their character is supposed to inhabit and of the characters in that world - Method Acting is pretty "soft and smooshy" rather than a set of iron rules and mechanisms, relying on a person's own "emotional engine" and ability to pretty much forget that they're not that "person" which is the character living those things (think of it as an actor's version of suspension of disbelief) so who knows what influences the actor might take in subconsciously which then affect their embodyment of that character, which would be a bigger concern now that they've already embodied that character (for the last season of the series) and that should not change for actor reasons rather than character reasons (i.e. the character should only change due to things that happen to the character).

No doubt some actors would think that playing the game would make no difference, but it's valid for some to think it might.

I'm sure, if he goes to them, convention goers are more than happy to let him know.

I think people have gotten some unrealistic expectations from Henry Cavill. For all I know, Walton Goggins has absolutely nothing to do with the writing, so why would he care much about the source material? I can respect him for just wanting to do his job, listening to how his boss wants him to do it.

It's the director and the writers people should expect to care about the source material, not the actors.

If it was a character from one of the games, it would be so minor that I missed it. I think that character was created for the TV series.

This community is usually pretty good, so yes it can get a lot better.

Are you adapting an RPG to a different medium?

i have strong opinions about the most-of-an-episode that i watched, yes. i turned it off because i found it intolerable, despite coming to it having heard nothing but glowing praise and fully expecting to enjoy it. why on earth would i continue watching something i disliked so strongly? so that manchild fanboys on the internet can find some other reason to be demeaning to me for not sharing their frankly questionable taste?

let's face it, i could watch the entire thing and dissect specifically what i think is bad about every individual scene and you'd still be a condescending dick about it.

why does thinking a show was bad and/or thinking some actor's weird opinion is absurdly pretentious mean i'm damaged?

I think I tried 3 and 4?

It's not just the writers job, it's the directors job.

How should the ghoul react to a cazador?

As a player of the games, I have a visceral reaction. Has the ghoul's backstreet included environments where he would have encountered them? Spoken to people who have?

These are the kinds of questions I expect he'd need to be answered by the director, because i don't think the writers would have that much detail in the scripts. "Scared because one fucked you up once" and "scared because someone you thought was tough told you they got fucked up by one" are two different scareds.

If you trust the director, it might be easier to let them tell you what your character knows when you the actor need to know.

If you don't trust the director, then it might make sense to peek at the source materials. You better understand the environment, but now suddenly you know things your character might not, which I imagine adds additional burden on an actor. A common burden, mind you, but additional.

Actors can do research on their roles in order to ensure that they get what they're supposed to do right. Goggins not needing to do research is good for him, but him saying "I’m looking at this world from a very different perspective, and as something on a screen in which I am an avatar in. I don’t believe that I’m an avatar. I believe The Ghoul exists in the world." is missing the point, playing the game in this situation isn't about "being an avatar", but getting to experience the world and other characters where his character exists in, even if not as Cooper/Ghoul.

And the source material is inconsistent at best.